Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

When allegations of child abuse arise it is essential that they are rapidly and thoroughly investigated and the culprits — if any —brought to justice. No one is arguing with that. And so, when children’s homes operated by Islington Council in north London were said to be hot beds of paedophilia, prostitution, drug-taking and violence it became legitimate — essential, even — for newspapers to probe and ask questions. The London Evening Standard did just that, and its investigation revealed a terrible catalogue of ineptitude, neglect, fear and political manipulation resulting in the dreadful exploitation of children in Islington’s care.

According to the paper, this evil had been going on unchecked for years. The Standard claimed that the council’s equal opportunities policy — applied, they said, with Stalinist zeal — made it impossible for staff to complain about the nefarious doings of certain people, simply because they were from racial and sexual minorities. If anyone blew the whistle, went the argument, they would be accused of racism or homophobia and their careers would be ruined. Political Correctness, we were told, ruled the roost in Islington and common sense and the protection of children went out of the window.

The London Evening Standard was furious when its initial reports were dismissed as “gutter journalism”. But they have only themselves to blame. Newspapers have published so many stories about Labour local authorities which have turned out to be unfounded that they should not be surprised when nobody believes the ones that are true.

Eventually Ian White, director of Oxford social services, was commissioned to investigate the alleged horrors of Islington child care policies. His report was published to a predictable howl from the right-wing press about the insidious ethos of “political correctness”. Or, as The Sun put it: “A left-wing council’s obsession with being ‘fair’ to gays may have led to child sex perverts being employed as care workers.” The paper said that “Gay men were given preferential treatment. Their references were not investigated.”

The Sun, as always, needed a scapegoat, and they found it in the shape of Margaret Hodge MP, who was leader of the council when all this alleged abuse was going on. Ms Hodge is now a high-up in “New Labour”, a fact which The Sun was keen to exploit. “Margaret Hodge is the face of the sanitised New Labour,” it editorialised (May 24th). “She smiles, wears smart suits and is close to Tony Blair. But this woman once led the hard-faced harridans of London’s loony left. She presided over a regime which recruited homosexuals and left the door open for perverts in the name of gay rights… Remember her smug words if you are ever tempted to vote Labour.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here you see the let’s-make-political-capital-out-of-the-poofs technique in full operation. And believe me, you are going to see a lot more of it before Mr Major eventually chucks in the towel.

And if you need more evidence, just look at what right-wing propagandist Norman Tebbit said about the matter in his column in The Sun: “Many of us who know Islington’s Labour council suspected for years that its equal opportunities policy for gays and lesbians was used as a cover by perverts to prey on children in care… It is an appalling catalogue of corruption, all going under the sick banner of equal rights for sex perverts.”

The Daily Express agreed. In an editorial (May 24th) it said: “Left-wing town halls, which pander to the gay lobby and race industry, have become a joke. For children in the care of Islington Council this fashionable obsession proved little short of tragic. Social workers there were allegedly able to corrupt boys and girls for whom they were responsible because of doctrinaire disinclination to investigate complaints against them. Political correctness discounted suggestions that gay social workers could be paedophiles.”

But it is surely The Daily Mail that is playing the “political correctness” card for all it is worth. It accused just about everybody who doesn’t share its neo-fascist view of the world of being politically correct. It fingered the police as being PC for (a) wanting to curb the yobbish sexism of its male officers and (b) advertising jobs in the gay press. The BBC’s drama department is also stands accused of PC because, apparently, it doesn’t commission plays from a right-wing perspective.

Then the paper’s star columnist, the fanatically anti-gay Richard Littlejohn did his bit to exploit the Islington affair (May 26th) by linking it with the appointment of a gay “New Labour mayor” in the neighbouring borough of Haringey. According to Littlejohn, Mr Alan Dobbie has “announced plans to tour schools explaining to children ‘what happens behind the bike shed— and to talk about safer sex. Mr Dobbie later insisted that his visits to schools would be nothing more than ceremonial, but he was quoted as saying: “Parents’ little treasures know more than their parents think, so it’s important to tackle the issues that are sometimes embarrassing to talk about at home.”

Mr Littlejohn fumed: “Even if some children find it difficult to discuss sex at home, what makes him think that parents want their `little treasures’ to learn about it from a 28-year old politically-motivated, tub-thumping homosexual.”

But before we run away with the idea — which is being promoted for all it is worth by the Tories and their press toadies — that New Labour is the gay-lovers’ party, let’s not forget that it was a New Labour council in Ealing, west London which was recently accused of refusing to allow a long-standing “out” gay councillor to become deputy mayor. The Ealing Gazette (May 12th) reported: “Last week we revealed that Cllr John Gallagher had been unceremoniously dumped at the eleventh hour, despite being seen as the heir apparent for the job [of deputy mayor] for the last six months… some party insiders believe that one of the reasons why Cllr Gallagher was dropped was because he was gay… The Gazette has been told that the move was made after advice from Labour’s London regional office, which advised that having a homosexual mayor at the next election in 1998 could lose the party support.”

The Daily Mail even managed to entice New Labour star David Blunkett into showing his true colours in an article entitled “Labour and the lunacy of political correctness.” Mr Blunkett (who you will remember voted against equalising the age of consent for gay men) says that he has been dogged by political correctness all his life. He repeated all the discredited mythology about not being able to use the word “black” (as in blackboard or black mark) and “man” (as in chairman and spokesman). He doesn’t seem to know that most of it is lies — lies repeated so often that they have now entered the public consciousness.

Barmy Blunkett then went on to say that medical advice to avoid exposing the skin to excessive sunshine because of the risk of skin cancer is more “political correctness” and that “surely enjoying summer is one of the last things we should have to feel guilty about.”

This confirms it — the man is crackers. The rate of skin cancer in this country is accelerating at an alarming rate. What does Blunkett want — even more people dying from the horrendous effects of melanoma?

The concept of political correctness is a useful one for the Right. It gives a rationale (albeit spurious and senseless) for their endless bigotry (or, as The Independent put it: “The phrase `political correctness’ is spat from the lips like a gob of expletive. They are not words with meaning at all but mere invective.”) PC relieves people of any guilt they might have about harbouring racist opinions or homophobic impulses. To have hostile feelings towards these traditionally unpopular minorities is now, it seems, OK because suppressing them or challenging them is the realm of the “fanatic” and “extremist”, the “mind-controller” and “Marxist”.

Where it might lead can be seen with these latest attacks on equal opportunities policies. The message is clear: “Homosexuals shouldn’t be employed in jobs where they might come into contact with children.” From there it could easily move to “Homosexuals shouldn’t be given special privileges” and then to an atmosphere where the exclusion of sexual orientation from equal ops seems reasonable.

The problems in Islington were not caused by its equal opportunities policies, but by the bad management of those policies. If managers were afraid to discipline gay, black or disabled workers when they did wrong, then there is surely something amiss with the disciplinary process. It is not the fault of those black, gay or disabled workers who are entirely innocent of any misdemeanour that an ethos of fear had developed.

Sneering about “political correctness” means that the issues of injustice and unfair treatment in employment don’t have to be addressed. The catalogue of racist insult and anti-gay abuse that some local authority employees have to put up with is sickening. The Commission for Racial Equality reports that twice the number of young black men are out of work than white. The British Crime Survey reported 32,000 racially motivated incidents and 26,000 acts of vandalism against blacks. And recent reports from Stonewall and Social and Community Planning Research paint a dismal picture of large-scale discrimination against gay people in employment.

Nobody should have to spend their working lives on the receiving end of the contempt of bigoted colleagues. No one should be denied employment because of their colour, sexuality or a disability — so long as they are the right person for the job. And no one should be denied promotion because their boss is “non-politically correct” (i.e. a racist bastard who hates “poofs and cripples”.)

In an article in The Guardian (June 1st), Herman Ouseley, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, asked: “Who are the gurus of political correctness? Where are they? And what areas do they represent? The answers are: unknown; hardly anywhere; and virtually none.” He says: “The advocates of the ‘political correctness’ plot rely on trivia, silliness and political excess to exploit people’s fear and intolerance.”

Political correctness has recently been defined in The New Concise Oxford English Dictionary as “the avoidance of forms of expression that exclude, marginalise or insult racial or cultural minorities.” This seems to me like a noble purpose, but the way it has been perverted into something sinister by the right-wing press is contemptible.

It does, however, give us a glimpse at what is to come as the election draws closer. Attempts to move the gay rights agenda forward will be increasingly presented as nothing more than “political correctness gone mad”.

***

The arguments being put forward by those opposed to gays in the military are curiously sad and mean-minded. John Keegan, the defence editor of The Daily Telegraph, wrote (June 8th) that whichever liberal way society at large might be drifting in the matter of homosexuality, the military remained implacably opposed. “Generals and admirals are adamant. So are sergeants, aircraftmen and Wrens. They do not like serving with homosexuals who reveal their orientation. They go even further. Despite a service ethic amounting almost to omerta against splitting on comrades to those in authority, they undoubtedly do split on homosexuals.”

Isn’t this something of a pathetic argument? If there was no sanction against being gay in the military what would there be to split on?

Keegan says that “Once the knowledge [of a serviceperson’s gayness] got about, once juniors felt under threat, once equals or seniors developed a simultaneously watchful and protective attitude, administrative action ensued as if by the action of an unseen hand.”

But that unseen hand has a name: bigotry. It has another name: injustice.

Fortunately, much of the excuse-making garbage pouring out of the Tory press was balanced by more enlightened features in the liberal papers. Both The Guardian and The Independent were unequivocal in their demands for change, and The Indy (June 8th) gave us the thoughts of Andrew Sullivan, editor of The New Republic in the US and a conservative gay man, who sees the political ground shifting. Gay rights, he asserts, are no longer the province of the loony Left, but have intruded into even the most reactionary of institutions. “A new political language has been born,” he says. “It is the language not of separate cultural existence, but of equal human dignity. It echoes with the resonance of the noblest of causes in our recent history. And it will surely, eventually, win.”

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Right on schedule, the dead-beats in the “popular press” provided their expected response to the-present surge of gay-targeted television. Garry Bushell (Sun, July 5th) thought that Gaytime TV was more about “fantasy” than reality. “How many kids will be suckered by the glamorous myth?” he wanted to know. “How many will die horribly from the repugnant realities of a promiscuous gay lifestyle?”

A more generalised — and concerted — attack on what it regards as “Filth on Four” (or “sleaze TV”) was made by The Daily Mail. Over the past few weeks, the Mail has been running an hysterical campaign against Channel Four and its chief executive Michael Grade — whom the breathtakingly barmy Paul Johnson dubbed “Britain’s pornographer-in-chief’.

On the tail of the righteous indignation about the alleged bad taste of some of Channel 4’s output, (particularly The Word, and the showing of the supposedly blasphemous film The Last Temptation of Christ), came the launch of Dyke TV. Whatever the merits or demerits of Dyke TV (and, as no one has seen it yet, it is difficult to know whether it’s worth defending) it unfairly got carried away on the “tide of filth” conjured up by the unsavoury imaginations of Paul Johnson and his colleague, Mary (“batty old crone”) Kenny. They were joined in their onslaught by the aged former TV critic Philip Purser in The Daily Telegraph. This lumping together of what might well be serious gay telly with the juvenile offensiveness of The Word is annoying but predictable when religious extremists are charged by the religious press to make propaganda.

The ludicrously over-heated, over-stated fulminations of The Daily Mail’s posse of moral enforcers amused the nation for a few days. (Mr Johnson really is a national treasure. In former times we would have had to pay money to go and laugh at him at the asylum.) The problem is that very few people outside of the National Viewers and Listener’s Association agreed with him. “Asking those two blinkered individuals Paul Johnson or Mary Kenny to review Channel 4’s output is rather like asking Linda McCartney to host a guided tour of Smithfield Market” wrote one dissenting reader to The Mail’s correspondence column (June 22nd).

In the same issue, Barbara Sexton, who modestly describes herself as “an overtly feminine, intelligent, attractive, talented, youthful, compassionate, fortyish lesbian” let the Mail know that its readers aren’t all Mary Whitehouse clones. Ms Sexton objected to the paper’s depiction of lesbians as “the narrowest of cliques”. She explained that for 30 years she’s been exposed to heterosexual films, plays and columnists. She’s listened to straight love songs and had to accept that while heteros can be affectionate in public, she can’t. She congratulated C4, and particularly Caroline Spry, its lesbian commissioning editor, for helping restore some balance. (Ms Spry had been spitefully done over by The Daily Mail a few days earlier.)

But then the action switched from the TV programmes themselves to the advertising that pays for them.

There had already been a bit of a brouhaha over Guinness threatening to launch an ad with a gay flavour (“Bottoms up!” was The Sun’s “hilarious” headline over the story). Much comment followed about the unsuitability of Guinness ads as a vehicle for “that sort of thing”.

“Why in heaven would Guinness dream of running a TV campaign depicting blokes of uncertain gender, but almost certainly homosexuals, drinking its esteemed libation?” asked The Daily Telegraph (June 23rd). “… for Guinness to risk being branded, even by louts and hooligans, the poofters’ potion, would seem like madness incarnate.”

Everyone seemed in agreement — the ads were not such a good idea. Guinness will now probably agree — why pay to run the ads when they’ve already generated the desired controversy without spending a penny?

On a more sinister note, The Times (June 14th) reported that in the USA “the Christian lobby” has organised a boycott of Unilever after its products were advertised during TV programmes which the American Family Association say promote “sex, violence and profanity”. The “depraved” show singled out for most flak was the police series NYPD Blue which the AFA says is “pro-homosexual” and “promotes decadence and depravity, teenage pregnancy and random violence.”

When the Christian Right in America organises a boycott, the companies have to take it seriously. Both Burger King and K-Mart Stores suffered significant drops in profits after they were targeted. And, as the AFA says, once it organises a boycott among the one million members it claims to have, it can take a generation to dismantle.

Whether our own rather quaint born-agains could rally enough support to influence the advertising policy of multi-national corporations is another matter. When C4 showed Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ, Tesco, Mars and Peugeot all objected to their advertisements being shown during or close to the movie. It isn’t clear whether these objections were the result of any direct pressure from religious groups or whether they simply represented a desire not to be associated with controversial programmes.

Certainly the Catholic newspaper The Universe organised a huge protest around the film, telling its readers that if they failed to complain about it they would be committing “a sin of omission” for which they would have to seek forgiveness. The Guardian Diary mocked the afflicted by revealing that one man rang Channel Four threatening to blow up the building if the screening went ahead. When the duty officer asked for his name and address, the man dutifully gave it. Presumably he was forbidden by his religion to lie, and so received a visit from the police. No charges were brought.

I’m also told by a little bird in C4’s advertising department that a well-known burger chain has specified that its advertisements must not be shown during any of the up-coming gay programmes.

It is, I suppose, feasible that a company trying to foster a “family” image (and how menacing that word has become since it fell into the clutches of the fundamentalists) would not want its products associated with ‘alternative lifestyles’. But that doesn’t make the snub any the less insulting. Is the burger-buying money of gay people not welcome at these outlets?

Perhaps we ought to think about organising “counter-boycotts” whereby we deliberately switch to brands that are resisting pressure from the Jesus-in-jackboots brigade. I’m going to buy my Persil from K-Mart from now on, not from Tesco! And if ever I’m desperate enough to fancy a burger, it’s got to be a Burger King — and definitely not the other kind.

Let’s keep an eye on who is advertising on gay TV and, if we can, support them. It’s also important to let them know you’re buying their products — and why.

***

The farce that was the Tory party leadership election was almost hypnotic in its silliness. John Redwood didn’t stand a chance from the moment the TV news showed that film of him feebly pretending he knew the Welsh national anthem. What a berk! Who could have voted for a man who looked as though he was about to flare his nostrils and cry “No, stop messing about!”

Mr Redwood, right-winger though he is, said that he would not have precluded gay people from his Cabinet, although he would have preferred that they were “out” and honest about it. This sudden tolerance is strange coming from someone who had previously shown all the signs of being a blue-nosed tut-tutter.

There are two possible explanations why he made the comment. The first is the proven success of Chris Smith’s strategy: come out voluntarily and then The News of the World can’t do it for you. The second — and more likely —is that there are already gay people in high office in the Tory government and Mr Redwood wanted to ensure that he could have retained their services had he won the vote. Certainly The Independent (July 3rd) quoted — but did not name —what it claimed was a gay minister as saying that he was worried about Mr Redwood’s “puritanical streak”. Either The Independent made up this quote or there is at least one gay man in the Tory Government.

Mr Major has already declared that homosexuality would not be a bar to office in his government, and, having retaken the leadership, he is still happy to have a known gay man in his cabinet.

The problem is that none of these gay ministers is “out” to the country at large. Presumably if The Independent knows who they are, then the whips do too, and so it would be no big surprise to the Party if the men were to be “exposed” by the press.

But if these individuals, or any other gay MP, is reading this, I do commend you to come out and come clean. Although I recognise that Tories are not primarily motivated by generosity of spirit, you would be doing a great service to the gay community. And don’t forget, coming out could be self-serving, too, which is much more your style. Your Prime Minister has told you that he is gay-friendly, so there is nothing to fear from him. The choice is stark: take the plunge or take the consequences. Next time Rupert Murdoch wants a political canon ball to fire, it might well have your name on it.

You’ll notice that The Daily Mail is figuring large in this column recently. It seems the arena of anti-gay abuse has shifted quite markedly from the yob tabloids to the middle-market. Anyway, The Mail carried a story about “an explicit gay sex leaflet” which it claimed had been “sent to youth clubs” by the Terrence Higgins Trust. This leaflet, we were told, had “provoked furious protests” from parents. Well, one parent anyway — a Martin Clarke of Sittingbourne Kent. Mr Clarke says that the pamphlet (containing the dreaded four-letter words) was “seen by his daughter at her dance class”. Shame! Indignation! How could they do this to a little child?

You needed to read to the end of the article to discover that Mr Clarke’s daughter is actually 20 years old and is the teacher of the dance class. And you have to read even further to discover that the pamphlet was distributed to youth club leaders, not members. So, in fact, no little kiddies saw it at all. Still, the leaflet was then “banned” by Kent County Council who had taken the objections at face value. Talk about weasel words — The Daily Mail’s tongue has more forks than a canteen of cutlery.

Not to be out-done in the let’s-bash-Labour-with-the-gay-cudgel stakes, The Sun has “a watchdog” called Leo McKinsty to report on “political correctness and public waste” in local authorities. As you’d expect, his attacks are almost entirely on “left-wing” Labour councils. On June 30th he was droning on about Islington library stocking The Aids Trainers’ Directory — a list of courses on HIV and related issues —which he says is “no medical text but a monument to political correctness in 1990s Britain.” (Yawn.) He says that he is “totally opposed to anti-gay discrimination but this is discrimination in reverse … these courses amount to no more than indoctrination in extreme PC values …” (zzzzz!).

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

When, two years ago, American geneticist Dr Dean Hamer claimed that he had discovered a “gay gene” there was uproar. Some gay activists grabbed the findings with glee saying that they finally demolished the “morality” arguments put forward against us by our most implacable opponents on the religious Right.

At the same time the fundamentalists were fulminating about why money was being wasted on such research and that, anyway, it changed nothing. The ex-Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, even saw it as a God-given opportunity to rid the world of homosexuality by employing genetic manipulation.

Now the tables seem to have turned again. One of Dr Hamer’s research assistants has cast doubts on his methods and, according to The Independent, her accusations have resulted in the US Government ordering its Office of Research Integrity to investigate.

You can almost hear the whoops of joy from the born-agains and sighs of regret from the manufacturers of “Thanks for the genes, mom” T-shirts.

Hardly able to contain itself, The Mail on Sunday (July 9th) rapidly commissioned an article from Mark Almond, a lecturer in modern history at Oriel College, Oxford, which was headed: “Exposed: flawed work of the gay geneticist who misled the world”. Mr Almond says that he knew all along it was all a lot of clap-trap and had never believed for a moment that there could be such a thing as a genetic imperative for homosexuality.

Now just a moment. Has the Office of Research Integrity concluded its investigation? Has it, in fact, even started it yet? Or are The Mail on Sunday and Mark Almond being a tad premature in their celebration of the supposed “discrediting” of Dr Hamer’s findings?

Given that, at the moment, we have only one woman’s doubts to go on, what justification could the paper have for declaring Hamer’s work “flawed” and “misleading”?

Let’s just get the facts before we jump to any conclusions.

Ah, the facts. As Mark Almond says in his article: science is about facts and facts alone, and yet facts are a commodity with which he himself seems curiously careless. He says: “Since the ‘proving’ of the gay gene, exhaustive research by reputable scientists to verify Dr Hamer’s findings has proved fruitless. None has been able to reproduce the gene or find any trace of it.”

Mr Almond has obviously not seen The Times on July 3rd (six days before his own article) which reported that a study at the Institute of Behavioural Genetics at Boulder, Colorado, had, indeed, “confirmed the [Hamer] finding”.

Dr Stacey Cherry studied 33 pairs of homosexual brothers, a significant proportion of whom carried the same gene on the X chromosome that was identified by Dr Hamer. Some had heterosexual brothers that did not share the same gene, and no trace of it was found among 36 pairs of lesbian sisters. Another study conducted by Dr Michael Bailey of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois concluded that “for males, homosexuality is roughly 50 per cent inherited. The figure in females is much lower”. Dr Bailey says that there are probably also “environmental mechanisms” at work — such as the timing of the hormone surges in the womb — rather than social or psychological factors.

So where does this leave Mark Almond? He says that because Dean Hamer is himself gay he has “an ulterior motive” for ensuring that his research would prove his hypothesis. He says that gay scientists working on such projects have a “hidden agenda” and their work cannot be trusted. But what about lecturers in Modern History who write about science but don’t declare their religious motivations for doing so? Oh yes — nowhere in the article does Mark Almond directly declare his real reasons for being so opposed to the gay gene theory, but you can easily read between the lines when he says that: “scientists should not play God… The decline of religion has led people to look to science for the moral authority they once got from priests. But unlike religion, science is not about faith — it is about facts”.

It’s no good, Mr Almond, we’ve got your number. If anyone has a hidden agenda, I think it might well be you.

But before we leave those who are trying to use homosexuality as a means of justifying their own hateful dogmas, we have to return to Paul Johnson (“Can we take this man seriously?” asked The Daily Express on July 26th). Mr Johnson has extended his campaign against the “pornographic” Channel 4 from The Daily Mail into the pages of The Daily Telegraph. His attack this time is upon Sir Michael Bishop, Chairman of Channel 4, whom he accuses of waging “a crusade against Christianity” by broadcasting “15 solid hours of sex-pervert propaganda known as Dyke TV”.

Mr Johnson (for some reason nicknamed “loony bins” by Private Eye) becomes increasingly hysterical as the article proceeds, lashing out at all and sundry and eventually issuing an Old Testament-style curse on Sir Michael: “It is relevant to ask why [Michael] Bishop should so strongly back what have become Channel 4’s distinguishing characteristics — tastelessness and propaganda for homosexuality. His self-compiled entry in Who’s Who… reveals the fact that he runs British Midland Airways. Which airline one travels on is always a difficult question. Airliners are fragile things and an awful lot can go wrong with them. And Almighty God is not mocked with impunity. Personally I would not travel by an airline run by a man who chairs a television pornography channel notorious for its anti-Christian cynicism.”

The fact that this passage is itself blasphemous seems not to worry the bizarre Johnson one iota. He should think about getting a lightning conductor for his own roof before he starts threatening God’s wrath — in the form of an air disaster — on innocent people.

But we leave Mr Johnson’s fanatical campaign against “plummeting television standards” with a quote from Jaci Stephen in The Guardian (July 31st): “These are important issues which programme-makers need to discuss, but to do so in an atmosphere of hysteria and contempt inhibits them from examining TV’s role in a vastly changing world. Rejecting people by a system of spiritual cleansing is one that, heading towards the 21st century in a complex society, ultimately leads to intolerance, hatred and violence for all those who do not fit the requirements of what is being held up as the ideal and the norm.”

***

The papers continue to out people — albeit at the moment only those of a deceased nature. Perhaps the one that caused most fuss was Jane Austen (“Austen a lesbo” as The Sun so delicately put it). The claim was made in an article in the London Review of Books by “self-confessed lesbian” Dr Terry Castle who, according to the Daily Express (August 1st) “has spent years reading the letters and novels of the life-long spinster.”

Naturally there was “outrage” from Austen fans who imagined that this “sex slur” was the worst possible slander that could be levelled against their heroine, but Dr Castle topped it by inferring that Jane had a Sapphic relationship with her sister, Cassandra.

Only if you read beyond the headlines will you find that Dr Castle isn’t suggesting that “they necessarily had a sexual lesbian relationship in the modern sense” but they were “clearly very close and very tactile. They definitely had a strong homoerotic dimension.”

One of the defenders of Jane Austen’s “reputation” says in The Daily Telegraph (July 31st): “You can have our response in two words” — but does not specify what they are. Another excuse-maker says that the reason Jane Austen never married was because “she saw her destiny as a writer quite early on.” The only problem with this is that thousands of other writers seem to have found no difficulty at all in reconciling marriage with their “destiny”.

One biographer of Austen, Elizabeth Jenkins, similarly pooh-poohs the theory, explaining that the sisters’ rather over-enthusiastic bed-sharing was simply the result of a lack of central heating.

And will the next celebrity step right this way, please. Why, it is none other than John F Kennedy, named in a forthcoming biography by Ralph Martin as a possible closet case. The Daily Express reported that Mr Martin believes the assassinated President had a gay affair with his best friend, “bachelor Lem Billings”. This affair was conducted when Jack and Lem were room-mates at college.

The author doubts that Kennedy was gay but says that he was “very unsure of his sexuality.” Rather like a certain Right Reverend gentleman of our acquaintance.

Finally, the recently departed poet Sir Stephen Spender was outed by the London Evening Standard when it reported the up-dating of a biography by David Hughes. “Spender, claims David, never ceased to be a practising homosexual, continuing his dalliances with men even after his marriage to Natasha Litvin in 1941.”

The author cites several anecdotes as “proof” of his contention that Spender was gay. The family say they will take whatever action is necessary to “protect Sir Stephen’s name.”

The interesting thing that emerges from all this is not so much that these people were — or might have been — gay, but that it should still be considered such a disgrace that it has to be ferociously denied — whatever the evidence.

It says much more about the unthinking homophobia that pervades this country than anything Paul Johnson might screech.

***

John Lyttle’s column in The Independent is an intimate examination of one man’s gay life. Mr Lyttle spares us no details as he dissects his reactions to the events that overtake him. On July 28th he was writing about the uncomfortable and confusing feelings he was having about occasionally not wanting to have sex. He was not, he revealed, the unfailing sexual athlete of gay fantasy. Sometimes, he concludes, you just don’t want to do it, and sometimes you just can’t.

This piece of painful honesty drew an extraordinary response from Julie Burchill, who wrote in a letter to the editor: “As an important member of the gay community myself, I object most strongly to John Lyttle’s morbid autopsy of his own sexual failings. Might I remind Mr Lyttle… that we are ambassadors for our sorely ill-used people and should strive to maintain a positive and tranquil appearance at all times. If this means lying about what brilliant sex we have, then so be it. There are enough gloating heterosexuals who will lose no time in pointing our short-comings out to us without we ourselves joining in the free-for-all.”

The London Evening Standard’s Diary seemed to take all this literally, confused at Ms Burchill’s sudden “unsolicited information about her sexual status”. Reference is made back to Ms Burchill’s recent claim that she and her friend Charlotte Raven are “not homosexuals. We are simply in love.”

Of course, Ms Burchill’s letter to The Independent was meant to be ironic. It was intended as some kind of obscure expression of her contempt for gay men and the gay movement, wrapped up in what she imagined was a witty, neatly indirect riposte.

In reality it is so embarrassingly pathetic, I think she must have written it under the influence of Vimto.

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

When journalists become desperate for news — as they often do in August —­ then gays had better watch out. This year’s silly season victim was Michael Barrymore.

The tabloids had been knocking on Michael’s closet door for weeks, examining every aspect of his private life. Then came the tales of clandestine visits to gay clubs and conversations with Ian McKellen and finally the male “friend” who told the Sunday Mirror about his “sex romps” with the star.

Joan Smith in The Independent described the pursuit this way: “Newspapers are increasingly taking on the role formerly occupied in Roman Catholic countries by the Inquisition. Tabloid hacks confront sinners, put them on trial, refuse to listen to their tearful denials, extract admission (torture by publicity) and finally administer absolution.”

Having thus prised the reluctant Barry­more out, the tabloids immediately started criticising him for “flaunting” his sexuality. “I’m sick to the back teeth of Michael Bloody Barrymore,” wrote Carol Sarler in The People (August 27th). “I’m sick of the sight of him. I’m sick of him coming out all over the shop… but most of all I’m sick and tired of being told how courageous and how brave he has been in announcing to the world that he happens to be gay.”

Richard Ingrams was soon on the bandwagon (Observer, September 3rd): “The trouble with men, or women for that matter, coming out is that they cannot resist referring to it thereafter at every opportunity… You do not mind the fact that they are gay. What you mind is that they are tremendous bores.”

That’s the new angle: homosexuals are bores. In fact, Mrs Angela Vigus of Chislehurst wrote to the Daily Telegraph (August 17th): “I would like to change the word referring to homosexuals from ‘gays’ to ‘bores’… It seems to me that these days much so-called homosexuality is little more than what used to be called exhibitionism.”

Paul Callan (The Daily Express, August 26th) agreed and under the heading “More Bore from Barrymore” wrote: “Am I the lone voice in finding all this baring of the sexual soul by Michael Barrymore tedious, unnecessary, vulgar and even a touch repulsive?”

Lone voice? You must be joking! “Don’t be an out and out bore, Barrymore” said Andrew Neil in The Daily Mail (August 31st); while Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Sunday Express (September 3rd) said: “Was I the only one who wanted to chuck a heavy object at the screen when he came out [on a TV awards programme]?” And just to prove that great minds think alike, Alex Renton in The London Evening Standard wrote: “Is there anyone out there with anything to say about the Michael Barrymore news beyond ‘so what?’… sexual identity is fast becoming boring.”

But never mind the press gobshites — what about Barrymore? What has the hounding done to him? Will his career survive? Can his natural audience — the blue rinse brigade as he calls them — continue to love him now that they know? Next time the grannies tune into his show, and see Michael flapping his wrists, kicking his legs up with the chorus girls, embracing his male guests and dandling children on his lap, will they be seeing him through the same pair of glasses? Or will his camp behaviour — previously regarded as just a bit of innocent fun (after all, he has got a wife, hasn’t he?) — now make them shudder with revulsion?

And what approach are the tabloids planning for him? Will they leave him alone to get on with it, or are they going to hunt him into obscurity? Their initial reaction, after they’d pushed him over the brink, was reassuring: “It took a lot of honesty for troubled Michael Barrymore to admit he’s gay,” editorialised The Daily Mirror (August 21st). “We hope his honesty will make him a happier person.” Even The Sun said: “Now you can honestly say you’re awight, Michael.”

But that initially sympathetic response didn’t last long and soon The Sun was warning: “Britain’s most popular entertainer seems to have pressed the self-destruct button. He is flaunting his homosexuality in the worst possible way. He camps it up in bizarre gay clubs with young friends, shouts four-letter abuse and is involved in an unseemly punch-up. Michael you are risking the special affection in which you are held by the public. Come to your senses before you throw everything away.”

This is the danger for Barrymore: around every corner someone will be watching. Wherever he goes and whatever he does, someone will know that they can make a quick buck by telling the tabloids about it. All the stories written about his new life from now on will be decorated by the adjectives that low-life newspapers cannot leave out of gay stories: seedy, sordid, bizarre, disgusting.

It has begun already. “Barrymore pinched our bums in pub — brickies in fury at gay star’s chat up,” was the headline in the News of the World (August 27th).

They claimed that Barrymore had made lewd suggestions to two innocent young men in a pub (Paul Wise, aged 43 and Mark Gibbs, aged 30, actually). They were so traumatised that Barrymore fancied them that only a Murdoch pay-out could help them. You have to read to the very last sentence to discover that the reported events took place FIVE YEARS AGO.

Will his constituency of grannies still love him after a few more doses of this?

***

The only gay column in a national newspaper — written by John Lyttle — appears every Friday in The Independent.

And it’s starting to get on my nerves.

Mr Lyttle is rapidly turning into the Percy Sugden of gay journalism. Moan, moan, moan. There doesn’t seem to be any aspect of gay life that pleases him. He hates discos, he hates muscle boys, he hates the drug culture, he hates the gay press (“the new PC thought police”) and he’s decided that there is definitely no such thing as a gay community. He is miffed that he hasn’t had children. He cracks on endlessly that gay life — as promoted by gay organisations and pub-owners — is like some kind of prison from which there is no escape. He thinks that we are all living in a fantasy world, victims of irresistible commercial forces on the one hand and political correctness on the other.

On August 18th it all came to a head when he reported an encounter he’d had with one of his critics in a gay pub. “You’re John Lyttle,” says the critic.

“What I am is off-duty,” bites back John, in best Bette Davis style. The critic (who naturally has bad breath) persists: “About your bloody column… “

During this exchange the gay man who dares to disagree with John is, of course, portrayed as an arsehole, while John is full of good sense, witty ripostes and the kind of condescension that befits a star who has been forced to mingle with ordinary persons.

Actually, I happen to agree with most of John’s gripes about the scene. Like John, quite a lot of my friends have also moved on from the club scene, they couldn’t give a toss whether Old Compton Street is gay, straight or redeveloped into a car park, and they feel that Bournevita is infinitely superior to Ecstasy.

But just because they’ve grown weary of the gay scene does not mean that they consider it intrinsically disordered, and that all those who do want to be part of it are pathetic inadequates. (“Toeing the party, party line where getting pissed, ingesting industrial strength drugs and dancing all night with all your might is deemed a political act”, as Mr Lyttle puts it.) He says there is a danger of getting stuck in fun-mode and making do with a lifestyle instead of a life.

You’re reading too much into it, John. What it means is that you are getting older. Believe me, there is now a whole generation of middle-aged gay men who have been out for the best part of their adult lives and who nightly give thanks that they will never have to go to Heaven or The Fridge, or any other late-night venue ever again. Like just about every other gay man of their age, they’ve had the lifestyle. Now they’ve got the life.

But they don’t want to stand in the way of the next generation having a go. They recognise other people’s right to sow their oats and make their own discoveries just like they did. Pity you can’t extend the same tolerance.

But, John, you’ll be pleased to know that you have a supporter for your views. Polly Toynbee, writing in The Radio Times (August 19th), also thinks that being gay isn’t really as much fun as we like to imagine. Writing about Gaytime TV she said: “My main criticism is that it suggested gay means non-stop partying — an enviable hedonism. My objection to that is not a moral one, nor the danger that they may subvert our youth, but simply that it isn’t true.”

Oh dear. I’d been planning to throw a party next weekend, but I think I’ll cancel. I might get John and Polly knocking on the door complaining that the music’s too loud.

***

On May 17th, 1987, on the weekend before the general election, The News of the World ran a two-page expose entitled “My love for the gay Labour boss”. It concerned Peter Mandelson, who was at the time a “spin doctor” and adviser to Neil Kinnock. Mr Mandelson rode the storm, survived, and eventually became MP for Hartlepool and a senior adviser to Tony Blair.

Now Bryan Gould, the ex-Labour MP who returned to New Zealand a disillusioned man, has published a book of memoirs in which he briefly refers to the unfortunate News of the World incident.

This was enough for The Sun to claim that Mr Gould had “sensationally exposed” Mr Mandelson’s homosexuality — reporting that “it will be seen at Westminster as Mr Gould’s revenge on the man he blames for wrecking his leadership bid in 1992.”

Speaking about the affair in The Sunday Telegraph (August 27th), Mr Gould said: “I had no concept at all of ‘outing’ him. He was ‘outed’, if that’s the right word, and has very happily lived with that for the last eight years. The Sun knows that very well.”

So, there we have it. Mr Mandelson is Britain’s third bona fide gay MP, although he’s not exactly shouting about it. Perhaps we can now claim that our representation in the House stands at two-and-a-half.

Mr Mandelson is, of course, a well-known press manipulator. Journalists are not fond of him, nor he of them. I don’t know how he intends to play this, but I hope he is not going to let the tabloids have a second bite at the Labour-bashing cherry by allowing them to out him yet again just before the next election.

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

“Let 16-year olds have gay sex and stand as MPs, say young Lib Dems.” This was the sneering headline over The Daily Express’s report (September 21st) on the Liberal Democrat Conference.

Michael Winner, though, thought the whole idea of teenage parliamentarians was a good one (although he was equivocal about an equal age of consent). He wrote in The News of the World (September 24th): “Why not? Most 16-year olds are exceedingly bright and untainted by ‘adult’ stupidity… If it came off we could have dozens of gay 16-year olds in the House of Commons. I don’t know why, but I find that immensely desirable! Make a change at least, wouldn’t it? And let’s face it, a few hundred straight MPs haven’t done such a great job anyway.”

Mr Winner has a point. But the likelihood of “dozens of gay MPs” is receding by the moment. The Independent reported that “the Conservatives are choosing ‘safe’ married men as candidates for the next election and rejecting single men, women and non-whites.”

A survey by the paper showed that of the 26 candidates so far selected for Tory seats, all are white and all but three are married (one of them is divorced) and, worst of all, one of them is Dr Adrian Rogers!

The Independent says that “single men on the Tory candidates’ list claim that they are being weeded out by local associations to avoid suggestions of homosexuality or philandering. Three disappointed hopefuls say their marital status was a factor.”

Do the Conservative grass roots honestly believe that marriage is an automatic guarantee of sexual probity? I merely mention the names Tim Yeo and David Mellor and then rest my case.

Dame Angela Rumbold, the Conservative vice-chairman (sic), says that in selecting married men, some constituency associations imagine they are getting “two for the price of one”, with wifey “doing the donkey work”. But even she admits that such thinking is “frightfully old-fashioned”. The truth is, they are rejecting bachelors because they don’t want to see them popping up on the front page of The News of the World.

At the last election it became clear that Labour, too, was screening out potentially gay candidates in order to avoid what they considered “adverse publicity”.

It seems that before Parliament starts making righteous noises about equality in society it ought to put its own House in order. Where’s the democracy they keep squawking about when a whole section of the population is, in effect, denied the opportunity to participate in the legislature? Unless they lie their heads off, of course.

***

BARRYMORE WATCH: This new feature will bring you news of the tabloids’ pursuit of Michael Barrymore in the run-up to the launch of his new TV series. We start with “Barrymore Pal is Rent Boy” which was The Sunday Mirror’s splash front page headline (September 10th).

You had to turn to the double-page spread inside to discover that it was only virtual reality. Barrymore had simply shared a drink and a chat with the supposed rent boy and, even the paper had to admit, didn’t know anything about his “profession”. No story, but plenty of innuendo.

Although Private Eye reported that the editor of The Sun had told his journalists to lay off Barrymore, its September 23rd edition carried a picture of Michael with Paul Wincott, a young man in his 20s. According to the paper, they “shared an evening at an East London flat” and the star left at 6am. Did the journo sit outside all night long just for that? No wonder these Sun chaps often appear deranged.

Even more unpleasant was a piece by religious maniac John Macleod in The Glasgow Herald (September 29th). He used the Barrymore episode to launch an all-out attack on homosexuality. “A homosexual lifestyle is unnatural, dangerous and evil,” he wrote. “It is a lifestyle remarkable in its practice — as has been borne out by study after study — for promiscuity, instability, neurosis, substance-abuse, and suicide, untold depths of degradation and misery and self-loathing. It may seem a very easy way at present to Michael Barrymore… but it will end, in the next world, if not in this, in his utter destruction.”

When will the Barrymore bomb burst in the tabloids? Watch this space.

***

The Republicans in the USA — often regarded as the sworn enemies of homosexuals — are finding that “the gay lobby” is as much inside as outside their ranks these days. An interview with Andrew Sullivan appears elsewhere in this issue of Gay Times and, in the meantime, the London Evening Standard’s Washington Correspondent, Jeremy Campbell, told us (September 13th) that “the religious Right, implacable foe of deviant pleasures and egregious couplings, is mellowing on gays.” He cites the 1994 elections that swept the conservatives into power and says that exit polls showed that “34 per cent of gays voted Republican.” The Republicans have found that fanatical and dishonest opposition to gay life is actually counterproductive. It turns many voters off.

According to Campbell, Bill Bennett, an arch-conservative, hero of the Right and author of a best-selling book on “virtue”, has “signalled a new armistice with gays by calling for an end to scapegoating them for the decline of the family, when wholesale divorce must surely be laid at the door of heterosexuals”.

“Tolerance rather than acceptance” is how Bennett describes his shifting stance. Campbell thinks it is “more of a change than it sounds”.

Meanwhile, an American scholar, Professor W Scott Thompson of Tufts University, a prominent member of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, has written an essay about the founder of the Republican party, Abraham Lincoln. Its title, “Was Abe Gay?”, and its assertion that Lincoln shared a bed for four years with a merchant named Joshua Speed has caused a furore among traditionalists (as reported in The Daily Express, October 3rd). Although he subsequently married, Lincoln continued to write “extraordinarily tender letters” to Speed. Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln describes the two as having “a streak of lavender and spots as soft as May violets”.

Even our own raving Right-wingers couldn’t wait to get in on the act, and in The Daily Mail letters column (October 5th), R. Beardsmore says that “obviously the Gay Lobby will stop at nothing in its quest for moral acceptance… Does this latest accusation about President Lincoln mean that we should look at Morecambe and Wise in a new light?… Maybe it would be better to say that the Gay Lobby can’t see a belt without hitting below it.”

I don’t know about you, but I can think of better things to do below the belt than hitting.

***

The Daily Express (October 5th) told us that “Labour’s pledge to give lesbian, gay and unmarried couples equal rights to their partners’ pension benefits will hit traditional families.”

Apparently, the Labour Party’s leadership had given its backing to a resolution allowing people to nominate who should benefit from their pension if they should die. Very few pension schemes give equal rights to unmarried couples, gay or straight, though even our very own Conservative Government has said that they don’t mind if they do (see Employment Focus, Gay Times, August).

The Express quoted Jim Brooks of the Clerical and Medical insurance company as saying that the change would cost millions. “What would have been a widow’s pension will become eligible to all.”

On a point of information, Mr Brooks — could you tell me how gay couples can ever benefit from the billions of quid they have contributed to pension schemes over the years and then seen disappearing into the pockets of “traditional families”? Given that we aren’t allowed to marry, how can we protect our partners if one of us dies?

The time for change is approaching, but I have a feeling that if the papers are going to present it as “the gays are trying to take our money away from us”, the opposition will be fierce. Indeed, The Express invited its readers to ring in and vote on whether they thought equal pension rights should be extended to gay men and lesbians. 90% said “no”.

Of course, it would be better if pension schemes adopted a fairer policy of their own volition, but they won’t do it without pressure. Start lobbying your pension scheme trustees today!

***

The Bishop of Portsmouth, the Right Revd Timothy Bavin, was one of those named in the infamous OutRage! outing incident earlier this year, and went public shortly afterwards to admit as much. Now The Times (September 15th) has announced that the Revd Tim has given away all his worldly goods (except his collection of opera records) and will move into a Benedictine monastery in Hampshire. There he will be able to forget all about homosexuality. Benedictines don’t do that sort of thing. Do they?

Well, I’m afraid Father Andrew Brenninkmeyer does. Characterised in The Daily Mirror (September 16th) as “the dirty monk”, Father Brenninkmeyer’s taste for young men led him into all kinds of trouble at the Benedictine abbey at Worth in West Sussex. One of his victims told how Brenninkmeyer “stripped during confession and suggested that the young man take off his clothes as well.” There are also tales of seductions on the sofa, and candlelit dinners for two. “Younger priests easily fell under his spell,” says The Mirror.

The good father has now been suspended and is believed to be in Switzerland. He has expressed “his deep remorse for any distress and suffering that may have resulted from his actions”.

Well, that’s OK then.

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Some of the gay community’s most vicious and implacable enemies must be putting the flags out this month, for it seems that their day has come. A right-wing conspiracy, orchestrated by The Daily Mail, has caused the Government to ditch a major piece of social legislation because, according to critics, it would damage “family values.”

The Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill, which would have extended protection from violence to all members of the family, was the first casualty of the new-found power of the right-wingers. This humane piece of legislation was progressing nicely until it was spotted by former hell-fire preacher William Oddie. Mr Oddie, who has a raft of anti-gay journalism under his belt, wrote an article in The Daily Mail claiming that the new legislation would give equal rights to unmarried partners and “go most of the way towards abolishing matrimony as a legally distinct state”.

It was untrue nonsense, but The Mail’s puritanical editor, Paul Dacre, decided to turn the issue into a “campaign”, dubbing it “The Live-in Lovers Charter”. The ploy succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Behind the scenes, groups like Family and Youth Concern (for whom William Oddie’s wife works), the All-Party Pro-Life Group, Christian Action Research and Education or CARE (sic), the Conservative Family Campaign as well as Catholic MPs (whipped up by John Patten) mounted a “family values” offensive which eventually caused the Government to cave in to their demands.

There was a triumphalist air at The Daily Mail, which suddenly realised that it had the power to dictate to Parliament. Immediately it followed up with other “campaigns” against proposed changes to the divorce legislation and laws on mental incapacity.

The paper’s distorted and untruthful presentations of these reforms as “subverting family values” and “introducing euthanasia by the back door” did not go entirely unchallenged, however. The Independent called them “claptrap” and editorialised (October 27th) “The possession of a small majority in the House of Commons must be irksome in many ways for Her Majesty’s ministers. But of all the myriad disadvantages it confers, that of having to take Lady Olga Maitland seriously must be the pits.”

The paper went on to say that it was a classic case of the “rump wagging the dog” and that any changes forced on to legislation by right-wing Tory idiots “would substitute nostalgia for wisdom and authoritarianism for enlightenment”.

The Independent warns us that “as the election approaches there will be more of this [right-wing social authoritarianism]”. The Tory bigots have been bolstered by the fact that Labour seems afraid to be too critical in case it is perceived as opposing “family values”.

The implications of all this for the gay community are plain to see. The prospect of any pro-gay legislation being introduced into be fallen upon by the forces that have already dictated the fate of these other reforms. They would claim once more that “the country has shifted to the Right and has dumped the permissive morality of the sixties”. They will claim that Britain has embraced this mad fundamentalist agenda that they are promoting.

This is not true, of course. Opinion polls show that the British are not a moralistic nation, and they demonstrate this in the ways that they live — a third of children are born out of wedlock, for instance. In truth, the country is having these reactionary opinions inflicted upon it by a relatively small group of people who are taking advantage of the Government’s weakness.

Then The Mail turned its malign focus upon gays (3rd November). It published a “confidential letter” from the Commander of the Fleet which “reveals furious opposition among all ranks to lifting the current ban on gays in the military”. The letter, written by Admiral Sir Hugo White (married 29 years, we’re told), is the usual mish-mash of bigotry and prejudice, and says nothing new, but The Mail devotes three screaming, ranting pages to it.

One of the points made by the Admiral is that: “There is a silent majority in the UK who understand and sympathise with our corporate stance.” He provides no evidence for this (or for much else of what he says). The Daily Express (October 10th) asked its readers: “Should homosexuals be allowed in the forces?” Surprisingly, 84% of those who rang in said “yes”. On the same day, Teletext held its own phone-in on the same topic. Sixty-eight per cent of its respondents thought gays should not be allowed in the forces. Even so, this hardly represents overwhelming support for the military top brass’s virulent homophobia.

I doubt whether that is going to stop The Daily Mail fulminating against us. The scary part is that in these final days of a hopeless Government, The Mail’s disgusting rhetoric may be taken seriously and acted upon.

***

Andrew Sullivan’s book Virtually Normal was launched last month on a wave of hype unprecedented for a gay polemic. Just about every newspaper interviewed him, The Guardian serialised the book and finally there was a full-scale debate at the prestigious Cafe Royal in London. But what exactly was “the argument of his life” which Mr Sullivan “had to win”?

At the London debate, he was joined on the platform by — among others — Lynette Burrows, the Sunday Telegraph’s gay-baiter-in-chief. Ms Burrows recounted her experience of being “a token ‘straight’ at the homosexual debate” in the following Sunday’s Telegraph (October 15th). “A typical collection of homosexuals displays the same po-faced bigotry, the same denial of any common ground and the same herd instinct to attack which have informed the very worst of the anti-homosexual mobs in the past,” she said. “This was certainly the case last week; my arguments were ignored and I was accused of being simply dangerous. It struck  me, as I am sure it struck Mr Sullivan, that if I had been the only homosexual in a large group of hostile heterosexuals, someone would have stood up for me out of a civility and courage that are usually very strong among the English.”

I was at the debate, and the reason that Ms Burrows’ arguments were laughed at was because they were laughable. I had fleeting feelings of sympathy for her plight — it cannot have been pleasant standing on a platform hearing her most cherished beliefs earning the titters they so richly deserve. But I did not come to her defence because her opinions were disgusting. She was saying in essence that because she finds gay sexual behaviour “repugnant” we should not have the same human rights as other citizens. Such opinions deserve derision.

The reviews then started to come in. After the hype, what did the critics think? Charlotte Raven didn’t like the book at all. In The London Evening Standard (October 16th) she wrote: “Apparently, our time would be much better spent in persuading the straights, by means of meticulous and exhaustive argument, that gays aren’t necessarily going to jump on your first-born, upset your grandma or pull down every picket fence they pass. In fact, as well as being potentially respectable, we are actually virtually sane. Especially the ones who join the Army… This is not an argument about homosexuality so much as an apology for it.”

Matthew Parris, in The Times (October 19th) has some sympathy with Sullivan’s right-wing credentials, but in the end parted company with him. “Having so bravely taken on the moral Right, having wrenched himself away from Senator Pat Buchanan’s anti-Sodom and anti-Gomorrah rhetoric and set out on an odyssey of his own, Sullivan turns back for one last glance at the burning city and tries one last time to form a bridge, frame an argument that his Church and those he has defied, would understand. ‘I can’t help it!’ he cries. ‘I’m virtually normal. I’m only a little bit queer.’ In saying this he wrecks the integrity of his case.”

Jeanette Winterson reviewed the book for The Daily Telegraph(October 21). “Sullivan’s desired goals of equal access to marriage and the military are not prizes worthy of capture… Heterosexuals are deeply questioning both institutions, and while lesbians and gay men should never abandon their fight for equal rights, nor should they abandon their critique of the mainstream.”

Sullivan did have some takers, though. James Collard in The Independent on Sunday (October 15th) thought that: “Virtually Normal is not just some primer for a political struggle, but the product of a long hard-won personal fight. As such, the book moves hearts as well as minds.” Roy Porter in The Sunday Times (October 15th) liked the idea of assimilation, as proposed by the book. “Sullivan’s rose-tinted silent revolution (equality before the law, sharing benefits and responsibilities) offers an attractive solution; to its sweet reasonableness one can only say amen. It remains to be discovered, if virtual normality were achieved, what would become of the gay scene.”

Although Virtually Normal is an interesting contribution to the debate on gay rights, it is not the answer its publishers purported it to be. The struggle goes on, and it won’t be won by long-winded theory. Give me action-persons Angela Mason and Peter Tatchell any day.

***

XQ28 IS BACK! Yes, the “gay gene” controversy has been re-opened by an article in Nature Genetics in which Dr Dean Hamer claims to have successfully recreated his original 1993 research proving that nature plays a large part in the creation of our sexuality. No other scientist has been able to repeat Hamer’s results.

Two years ago, when the original research was published, The Daily Mail famously headed its report: “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ find”. This time round The Daily Express echoed that sentiment with its own effort: “Test to see if your unborn son is gay” (November 1st).

Of course, there is no such test and, according to Dr Hamer, no “gay gene” either. The Independent (November 1st) told us: “Dr Hamer does not himself believe in a gay gene despite trying more than any other scientist to prove the existence of a genetic — and therefore inherited — component to sexual orientation. The primary conclusion of his latest work… is that there is a region on the X chromosome that influences variations in sexual orientation in men, but not in women.” That is not the same as having identified a specific “gay gene” that can be manipulated.

It’s all much too complicated for the layman to understand, but Hamer imagines that one day someone will find the gay gene. And it will be at that point that the moral debate begins in earnest. Hamer says that he will try to prevent anyone using his research to develop a pre-natal “test” for homosexuality. But if he doesn’t want his findings misused, why did he undertake what many regard as unnecessary research in the first place?

He may well be creating a monster which will eventually get out of control, just like that other dabbling doctor — Frankenstein.

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

THE Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement has wasted no time in getting homosexuality back on to the agenda at the Church of England’s General Synod. After the election to the Synod of a couple of openly gay priests, and an increase in straight sympathisers of lesbian and gay rights, the topic of homosexual clergy was brought back in a motion tabled by the Venerable David Gerrard, who is married with four children and says he comes from the evangelical wing of the church. It was accepted for debate next year.

Richard Kirker, General Secretary of LGCM, knows that on this topic there is no chance of instant gratification. He told The Guardian (November 27th): “I’m not deluding myself about the time scale involved. It will not be until the year 2000 that we have 30-40 per cent support in Synod.”

There is certainly a great deal of persuasion to be done at the grass roots if a survey reported in The Times (November 14th) is anything to go by. It found that only 15 per cent of clergy thought homosexual sex was acceptable. Among their flocks this reduced to seven per cent.

One of the new members of Synod with more to offer this debate than most is the openly gay vicar, the Reverend Malcolm Johnson. He wrote an article in The Pink Paper saying: “I know what havoc the Church has caused by its insistence on celibacy. I have seen the devastation, guilt and frustration it causes. Add self-loathing and alienation, and the person is almost totally destroyed.”

The Independent on Sunday (November 19th) carried an interview with another straight supporter of the gay struggle, the Reverend Cristina Sumners. Ms Sumners is an American who decided to take up the battle for acceptance because she was moved by the suffering of gay men and women during her training for the priesthood. She says: “Their pain was great and memorable. One told me with tears in his eyes that all he really wanted was to get married and have children. They regarded homosexuality as a curse that had been visited on them.” However, she was not always “so generously disposed towards homosexuals”, and came originally from the far right Presbyterian tradition in Texas.

We are not told what she thinks of that tradition now, with its seething hatred, fanaticism and authoritarianism, but there is plenty of evidence that right-wing “Christian” groups in the US are continuing their crusade against homosexuals. The American Family Association, for instance, is making threatening noises towards the Walt Disney Corporation because the company has had the audacity to extend its health benefits to include the partners of gay employees (Guardian, November 30th).

A New Hampshire teacher has been sacked by her school board, according to the Times Educational Supplement, because she asked her pupils to read Maurice, a novel by gay author E M Forster. The teacher, Penny Culliton, said she wanted her students to see a positive image of homosexuals, but fell foul of the Christian Coalition, which has taken over the school board. The Coalition has decreed — Clause 28-style — that teachers “neither implement nor carry out any program or activity that has either the purpose or the effect of supporting homosexuality as a positive alternative lifestyle”.

But there are signs of a fight back in the US. P-flag, the support group for the parents of lesbians and gay men, has, according to The Times, made a 30-second commercial accusing the ranting evangelists of “fomenting abuse and violence against gay and lesbian people”.

The advertisements, incorporating shots of televangelist Jerry Falwell saying “God hates homosexuality” and Christian Coalition leader Pat Robertson calling homosexuality “a sickness” (and in the same breath mentioning Adolf Hitler and Satanism) have put the Jesus in Jackboots fraternity on the defensive.

Pat Robertson’s Christian (sic) Broadcasting Network says it will sue any TV company that carries P-flag’s commercial. He says that the ad wrongly suggests that he “advocates or promotes heinous crimes against gays or directly caused the suicide of one or more homosexual persons”.

P-flag claims that 30 per cent of teenage suicides in America are homosexuals. A representative for the group is quoted as saying: “Middle Americans are not an intolerant lot. They do not realise the level of abuse and violence against gay people.”

Meanwhile, over in the Jewish camp, Rabbi Julia Neuberger wrote in The Guardian (November 18th): “Non-orthodox Jews are beginning to say, in the modern world, that our ancestors were wrong in regarding male homosexuality as an abomination. If we are going to say that sex is not only for procreation of children, but is for peace in the household and love, and for strengthening bonds between a couple, then that can be applied to a couple of the same gender as to a couple who are heterosexual.”

Could it be that moderation in religion is coming back into fashion?

***

The hot topic this month: is dance still an art form dominated by gay men?

After Matthew Bourne’s revolutionary re-working of Swan Lake to include a corps of male swans (reviewed on page 69), The Observer reported on the disposal of 155 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures of the male nude which once belonged to Rudolf Nureyev. The paper says the sale, “tells us much about the dancer that was never made public while he was alive.”

The collection shows, according to The Observer, that “far from being a masculine Prince, as he was on stage, Nureyev was a promiscuous homosexual who hardly missed an opportunity to invest any encounter with sex.”

This theme of homosexual men not being “masculine” (whatever that means) was carried on in an article in The Independent (November 29th) by Jeffrey Taylor. Mr Taylor was writing about a forthcoming Channel Four film called Indian Summer, written by Martin Sherman — author of Bent. It concerns a male gay ballet dancer who is dying of Aids and who falls in love with his therapist, played by Antony Sher. Mr Taylor says news of the film “is already causing barely stifled groans throughout Britain’s male dancing community.”

But why?

Adam Cooper — who danced the Swan Prince in the above-mentioned Swan Lake, and who is a self-confessed heterosexual —is quoted as saying: “I turned Indian Summer down when I read an early script. I wanted nothing to do with the typical gay campness of the dancers in the film. I find it tasteless and offensive.”

Mr Taylor says that it is not true anymore that most male ballet stars are gay. “Certainly, in the 1940s, when our own ballet tradition came of age, homosexual dancers were in the ascendant — all the straight ones were in the army.” Oh really? And were gay men excused from the army, then? Only if they were “open”, and not many were in the 1940s.

Mr Taylor seems to be trying to convince us in his article that gay input into ballet is negligible. He quotes Greg Horsman, of the English National Ballet (described as “a doting father”) as saying: “People who assume all dancers are gay would be shocked to learn the truth about the percentage of non-gay men in ballet.”

Martin Sherman counters this with: “There has recently been a great effort to ‘heterosexualise’ the public view of the male dancer”. And he cites the dance films of Baryshnikov for almost totally excluding gay men.

But Mr Taylor is unconvinced by this: “Whatever else Sherman’s film achieves,” he writes, “there’s no doubt that it can only shore up a moribund old cliche that little bit longer.”

Just a minute — who exactly is doing the stereotyping here? Mr Taylor talks about straight dancers having to prove that “they are red-blooded males” all the time — what is that supposed to say about gay dancers? That they aren’t strong? Can’t dance “virile” parts?

That’s a slap in the face for every gay dancer who’s ever busted a gut for his art. The defensiveness of straight male ballet dancers does them no credit, it merely insults their gay colleagues.

***

Research by the BBC into “taste and decency” showed that viewers have become more “liberal and tolerant” in the past decade. Reporting the findings, The Daily Telegraph said: “Attitudes        to homosexuality on television had shown the greatest shift. In 1985, only 30 per cent claimed to know anyone homosexual while in 1995 that figure rose to 46 per cent. Even among older women, the least liberal group, the number prepared to accept homosexuality had risen to 40 per cent.”

The concepts of liberality and tolerance are, of course, anathema to The Daily Mail. Now that the paper could be mistaken for the official newsletter of Family and Youth Concern (aka The Festival of Light and The Responsible Society), it has a special interest in “taste and decency” on television.

“Leave aside the fact that a poll can produce any results desired,” editorialised the Mail, giving away one of its own tricks, “and consider this: if there is a greater acceptance of TV sex and bad language, is it not precisely because broadcasters have for decades been pushing at the barriers of what is acceptable? And a whole generation has grown up used to swearing and explicit sex on screen? The BBC claims greater public tolerance. The Mail would put it another way. Years of broadcasting crudity has produced a coarsening of attitudes.”

The interesting thing is not the predictability of this editorial, but the fact that The Daily Mail managed to get to the end without using the phrase “family values”. This is something of a record for the editor, Paul Dacre. All he needs now is the correct medication, and we might yet see him turn into a halfway rational human being.

***

Anecdote of the month comes from Sheridan Morley, who tells in The Independent on Sunday (November 12th) how he was once walking through Leicester Square with Noel Coward when they saw a film poster which declared “Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde in The Sea Shall Not Have Them”. Noel murmured: “I don’t see why not: everyone else has.”

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The extraordinary story of 84-year-old Lilly Wust, a German woman who has become a heroine for lesbians around the world, was told in The Sunday Times Magazine on December 10th.

During the war, Lilly was a good Nazi wife, doing her duty by producing sons for the Reich. Then, in 1942, while her husband was in the army, she fell in love with Felice Schrader, a Jewish lesbian. This was the beginning of a brief, but ecstatic affair which had all the elements of great melodrama: an intense but outlawed love destroyed by betrayal.

In order to survive the escalating persecution of Jews in Berlin, Felice had feigned suicide and become what was known as a “U-boat” — a Jew hiding from the authorities in a dangerous underworld. Tearing the yellow star that identified her as a Jew from her clothing, she tried to pass as “Aryan”.

Lilly took her into her home and they began an intensely sexual love affair — a relationship that was illegal on two counts, and fraught with danger.

It did not last long. Felice was tracked down, with the help of Jewish informers, and sent off by the Gestapo to a concentration camp. Lilly tried hard to find her and help her, but to no avail. Felice is thought to have perished in a Nazi labour camp.

Undaunted, Lilly took three other Jewish lesbian “U-boats” into her home and sheltered them until the war ended. She was subsequently awarded the Federal Service Cross by the German government and hailed as an unsung hero.

The Sunday Times says that Lilly has given German lesbians “a toe-hold in the history of their country”. I suspect that we’ll be hearing much more of Lilly Wust. Her story — to be published by Bloomsbury — is a natural for cinematic interpretation.

***

THE closet door has been revolving at top speed this month, with exposés, denials and regrets galore.

That doyenne of the sticky back plastic, Valerie Singleton, gave an interview to The Daily Mail (December 16th) in order to tell us that she is definitely not a lesbian. “I am honest and always honest,” she announced proudly. “This is why,” the paper says, “all the rumours which have long abounded about her being gay have upset her so. If she’d been gay, she’d have said so. But she isn’t. And she abhors the idea that she lives some kind of dark, secret life.”

So, it seems, as far as women are concerned, Valerie Singleton didn’t make one earlier.

Then, The News of the World outed “housewives favourite” Joe Longthorne (December 10th) after the paper claimed that he and Michael Barrymore had become “love rivals” for the affection of a guy called Norman. “Barrymore stole my gay lover” was the headline over the article, the juice of which was provided by “Joe’s former business partner Terry Lodge.”

Reluctantly out of the closet — courtesy of The People (December 10th) — comes Fred Talbot, the manic weather man on Richard and Judy’s morning TV show. Mr Talbot is described by the paper as “tortured” and “being of an age group which thinks that being gay is something to be ashamed of”. (He’s only 44 for God’s sake!) The People tells us that Talbot is “mortified at the prospect of coming out”. This did not, of course, restrain the paper from doing the deed for him.

Can this be the same newspaper which once, when commenting on OutRage!’s outing, wrote: “Who the hell do these gays think they are, acting like some liberation lynch mob?… Whether a person is gay isn’t the business of braying bully boys carrying the banner for gay rights.” It is though, it seems, the BIG business of bully boy journalists out to make money from misery.

Meanwhile, the newly-knighted theatrical impresario, Cameron Mackintosh apparently told The Daily Mail (December 16th) that he regrets ever publicly coming out. Five years ago, Mr Mackintosh signed a letter to The Guardian, along with 17 other theatrical luminaries, condemning Derek Jarman for arguing that Ian McKellen should have turned down his knighthood because it was proffered by a homophobic government. The letter began “As gay and lesbian artists…” Now he says he wishes he hadn’t done it.

“Why does one owe it to the gay population to come out?” he is quoted as saying. “It’s nobody’s business but mine. And I resent the suggestion that I am any kind of gay rights campaigner. I am the exact opposite, I just want to be as integrated as any human being.”

We have to take into account that this report appeared in the homo-hating Mail, but if this is what Sir Cameron really believes, then perhaps he needs his complacency shaking. If he doesn’t understand why high-profile role models are needed by young people, someone ought to explain it to him.

Dr David Starkey, on the other hand, does not regret being open. Also in The Daily Mail (January 1st), Dr Starkey — described as the rudest man in Britain — said: “I’ve never lost any sleep over it [being gay]. I’ve never felt guilty about it. I’ve never wished I wasn’t what I am.”

His only regret is that he came out to his elderly mother, Elsie, who took it very badly. “She was deeply puritanical about sex and I think it would have been kinder not to tell her.”

Always a tricky one, that.

***

The Guardian commissioned an interesting poll from ICM about attitudes to homosexuality, which it published on December 14th. The poll asked: “If a person is a declared homosexual living in a stable relationship with a partner, which of the following jobs should they be allowed to take?” — teaching, the church, the police, the armed services and members of Parliament. The results were reassuring: 72% said yes to gay teachers, 70% said yes to gay vicars, 73% were positive about gay policemen, 62% were OK with gay soldiers and 78% said it was fine with them if their MP was gay.

The Guardian said: “Homosexual MPs, who have been so reluctant to ‘come out’ for fear of alienating their voters, would face less hostility than members of any other profession.” And it quotes Michael Brown — the out MP for Brigg and Cleethorpes — as saying: “The press is far more worked up about this than the voters. It is still a novelty for the press to describe Chris Smith and me as ‘out’ MPs. But it passes the voters by.”

But let’s go back to The Guardian’s question. Why only those “living in a stable relationship with a partner”? What about the unattached? Are they to be considered inferior as employees? And why “allowed to take” — who is supposed to be doing the permitting?

Coincidentally, on the day the poll was published, I was talking to a man who sets the questions for a rival polling organisation, and I asked him why he thought The Guardian had framed its question in that manner. “Because The Guardian has an agenda like every other newspaper,” he said. “It wanted to prove that attitudes are liberalising, so it framed its questions to evoke such responses. If The Daily Mail had commissioned the poll, you can rest assured the questions would have been very different.”

The Guardian’s headline over the results of the survey said: “Tories most liberal-minded about gay MPs”. If you look at the results you will see that 81% of Tory voters approved of gay MPs, while 80% of Labour voters did. This is insignificant in statistical terms and hardly justifies the headline.

Much as I’d like to think these results are meaningful, I’m afraid I’m as suspicious of them as I would be of a poll in The Daily Express. Statistics, as they say, are the lowest form of information.

***

The liberal journalist Polly Toynbee has been in trouble with the gay community on several occasions in the past. In articles in The Guardian and The Radio Times she has written that gay activism is counter-productive and simply an annoyance to people who would otherwise be sympathetic. She has claimed that anti-gay discrimination is a figment of our imagination. In short, our troubles don’t exist and our protests are little more than a sop to political correctness.

Now she appears to have changed her tune. In her column in The Independent (January 3rd) she writes that in relation to homosexuality “the law causes a surprising amount of real suffering to those who fall foul of it.” Ms Toynbee’ s conversion came about through contact with Stonewall, which she describes as “a moderate lobbying group”.

She rails in particular against the Ministry of Defence proposal to introduce a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military. “It has led to no diminution of the number of people turned out of the US forces for being gay,” she says. “It amounts to a conspiracy of silence that still proclaims homosexuality officially unacceptable.”

And the pension situation is another injustice she perceives as genuine: “In about three-quarters of pension schemes, there is no way for unmarried partners to pass on their hard-earned entitlements.” At last the truth has dawned on Ms Toynbee — gays have genuine grievances which cannot be written off as “relatively piffling… vestigial discrimination”. But she is not optimistic about our chances of making much progress while this government remains in power simply because if gays were given equal rights, then unmarried heterosexual couples would demand the same.

“In the current political climate it is impossible to imagine giving more rights to cohabitees, since family values lobbies are clamouring for marriage to be strengthened through extra tax and benefit incentives — and even fidelity bonuses for those who remain married.”

Ms Toynbee thinks that “the gay world may seem like a small outpost of society” but the way society treats it reflects “a huge and growing area where the law is badly out of kilter with the way we actually live”.

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The Journal of Engineering Geology recently reported that scientists think they have found the location of the original city of Sodom on the edge of the Dead Sea. They say that the city was the subject of a geological shift that caused it to fall into a huge hole, and they now hope they’ll be able to excavate the remains.

This set Daily Telegraph columnist Frank Johnson thinking about what they might find. First, he says, they will come across a copy of Straight Times which will prove that not all the inhabitants of Sodom were gay. They might also find the Sodom equivalent of Time Out, which lists the best straight bars in town. “A few geological layers down might reveal copies of the Wolfenden Report with its controversial recommendation that heterosexuality between consenting adults should be legalised.” Even further down would be copies of The Sodom Telegraph complete with readers’ letters lamenting that they can no longer use the delightful word “straight” without being misunderstood.

Yes, indeed, Sodom has been the bane of gay people’s lives for four thousand years, but, if the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement have their way, all that might be about to change.

It seems that the sodomites at LGCM have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in getting the debate on the ordination of gay priests back onto the Anglican agenda. Richard Kirker, secretary of the LGCM has certainly outfoxed (and outraged) the ghastly church “traditionalists” who — despite what they say —hate homosexuals.

LGCM’s latest ploy, an advertisement in the religious press, marking the twentieth anniversary of the group, has been signed by over 300 senior Anglicans worldwide — including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The ad will, according to The Sunday Telegraph (February 4th) “plunge the Church of England into a fresh crisis”.

Of course, it’s always a pleasure to see the “evangelicals” spluttering and spitting as they lose the advantage to LGCM. Almost inevitably, the Archdeacon of York, the Venerable (sic) George Austin, is quoted as saying: “If successful, this campaign will split the church finally and completely. It is much more divisive than the issue of women priests, and will alienate decent Christian people who don’t want to see buggery blessed.”

Always good for a sound bite is the Ven George, but if it’s alliteration he wants, then try this: what self-respecting Christian wants to be blessed by a blithering bigot such as he?

This latest contretemps was preceded by news (Sunday Telegraph, January 28th) that “the Rev Dr Jeffrey John, a former Dean of Magdalen College, Oxford, has been elected to the General Synod’s Standing Committee, the church’s equivalent of a cabinet.” According to the paper, Dr John “advocates the rights of priests to live in homosexual marriages— and “the unusual speed of his elevation is certain to fuel speculation about the growing influence of the pro-homosexual lobby”.

Then came news that LGCM’s birthday party (or “service of thanksgiving”) will be held in Southwark Cathedral on November 16th. This once again got the “traditionalists” hopping up and down in fury.

The Guardian (January 25th) meanwhile reported on the “installation” of the new Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres. Don’t they just love giving themselves these inflated titles? “His hard line on sexual morality may set him on a collision course with the strong homosexual lobby in London,” the paper said, “where up to 25 per cent of the clergy are thought to be gay.”

The Guardian quotes Bishop Chartres as saying: “The Christian tradition is clear: either celibacy or life-long relationships, which are interpreted as between man and woman. We are not empowered — now, suddenly because the issue has come up very recently — to change that. These are the rules.”

The Rev David Holloway of the “traditionalist” Reform Group (strange title, given that they want everything to stay the same) agreed about the immutability of biblical teaching: “Homosexual acts are wrong and always will be. On this issue there are no grounds for disagreement, if you are going to remain biblical.”

So there we have it. If it says it in the Bible, that’s the end of the matter. But hang on — hasn’t the Christian Church been telling us for 19 centuries that if we aren’t “good” (i.e. if we don’t do what they tell us), then we’re going to roast in Hell?

Hell is described in The New English Bible as “where the devouring worm never dies and the fire is not quenched” (page 72) and in the book of Peter (2-4:2) as “punishment with everlasting destruction”. In the past, people who contradicted this dogma have been burned at the stake.

Enter the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission which told us in a report last month that Hell is “not eternal torment… but total non-being”.

Ah! So it turns out they can change their minds about what the Bible says, after all. Or to put it in the eloquent words of the Pink Paper correspondent Mike Parker: “The new Synod members have something of an uphill struggle on their hands, for the Church they hope to alter is based fundamentally on utter bollocks!”

***

Well, is he or isn’t he? And does it matter? I’m talking about Michael Barrymore who, to great applause from the tabloids, has gone back to his wife Cheryl. Mr Barrymore, you will remember, kept the papers busy last summer with one of the best coming out dramas of recent times. Now The Daily Record (January 26th) reports: “Michael gives up his gay ways to win back his wife.” Is that so?

What the papers don’t understand, and never will, is that there is no return ticket to the closet once you’re out. You might lead a straight lifestyle, have straight affairs, but you can’t unsay what has been said. As far as the papers are concerned, Michael’s name will for ever more be preceded by the sobriquet “the gay comic”.

So what’s really going on? Clinical Psychologist Oliver James tried to work it out in The Sunday Express (January 28th) when he put Cheryl Barrymore “On the Couch”.

Dr James says that the couple’s motivations for getting together again are “complex”. Mrs Barrymore is her husband’s manager and mentor. Rather like Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother, she thinks it should have been her up there getting the applause. She lives a life of showbiz success vicariously through Michael. Losing him was more like losing an alter ego than a husband.

Lowri Turner in The Sunday Mirror put it another way, describing Cheryl as “more a mother/manager than a lover/wife”.

But what about Michael’s motivation? If you are as dim-witted as John Junor, it’s very simple. He says, in The Mail on Sunday, that Barrymore “needs the respectability of a wife to restore his tarnished image and plunging popularity”.

I think the reason is more to do with fear. Gay life is not easy for a newcomer — particularly when that newcomer is 43 years old. Michael has made little commitment to a gay lifestyle and has found that life outside the closet can be harsh, unremitting and sometimes painfully cruel.

The recent break-up of his relationship with Paul Wincott (graphically described in The News of the World) was obviously shattering. No wonder Mike’s gone rushing back to his previous life, where at least things are familiar and he can relax.

Human relationships are infinitely adaptable and human beings often surprisingly accepting. A lot of “out” gay men have made successful marriages with straight women. Despite their unusual marriage being under constant surveillance by scabrous tabloids, perhaps Cheryl and Michael can renegotiate its terms and go forward to happier times. It doesn’t always have to be one thing or the other, sometimes it can be a bit of both.

***

During a gloriously bitchy interview by Lynne Barber in The Daily Telegraph, Edwina Currie admitted that MPs are, without exception, “very weird people”. Fortunately a lot of them will be leaving us at the next general election (either voluntarily or with a push).

Regrettably, there is an equally weird batch waiting in the wings to take their place. Perhaps the weirdest of the lot is Dr Adrian Rogers, who has been chosen as the prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for Exeter.

I was going to say that Dr Rogers is “right-wing”, but it hardly seems sufficient. His is not so much a political philosophy as a neurosis. He is founder of the “Conservative Family Campaign” — a tiny bunch of fanatics who appear to have a direct line to the columns of The Daily Mail.

Dr Rogers has been in the news this month because it was discovered that he spent his school days as the only boy among 900 girls at Sutton High School. The Daily Express wondered if this experience could explain his “virulently anti-feminist views”. The Guardian found an old school snap which it reprinted, just for the record, of course.

Then his local paper discovered that Dr Rogers — who, naturally, is also “virulently anti-porn” — once showed blue movies to friends at his home. He claims he didn’t watch them himself, but “only worked the lights”. This did not prevent him describing the film as “gynaecological” in character.

Before they nominated him as their prospective parliamentary candidate, the local Conservative Association were warned by Central Office that he was a liability, but they went ahead anyway.

The Monster Raving Loonies are going to have to come up with something pretty good at the election if they’re going to upstage Dr Rogers.

***

It started with the commercial for Peugeot cars that, the papers informed us, would feature the first man-to-man kiss in British TV advertising history. Shock, horror and lots of lovely headlines.

The trouble was, it wasn’t a kiss at all — the men’s lips met only so that one could give artificial resuscitation to the other. “The papers must have pretty strange imaginations,” a spokesman for Peugeot’s advertising agency told The Observer. “I don’t think it’s normal for one person to hold another’s nose when they are kissing them.”

Nevertheless, Peugeot had tons of extra advertising absolutely gratis. Just like Guinness did with a similar ploy last year.

Then The Daily Express (February 1st) told us that there was to be yet another advertising “gay kiss shock” and it’s “all to sell Virgin Vodka”. Having seen the ad I would have been hard pressed to identify the gay kiss without having it pointed out. It lasts about half a second and it’s far from clear what gender the kissers are. It’s also unclear whether it’s supposed to be advertising a night-club or a vodka. In fact, it was made by The Edge bar in Soho and not Virgin.

The This Morning TV programme asked its viewers to vote on whether the ad should be banned. From a record response — over 60,000 calls — 60 per cent said it should be. It’s all academic in the end. The ad now won’t be shown because it is seen as promoting alcohol to young people.

And now The Daily Mail (February 8th) informs us that a “lesbian kiss” is being used to sell Boisvert lingerie in an advert being shown in cinemas. Of course, the kiss is ambiguous — it could just be two straight friends greeting each other — it’s only the Mail’s spin that renders it “lesbian”.

It seems that if you want free advertising these days it couldn’t be easier: just put out a press release saying it will feature a “gay kiss”. That will guarantee you the kind of press coverage money can’t buy.

Ever felt exploited?

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Getting married or joining the army — these, we are told, are the most important issues of the moment for the gay community. It seems to me, though, that we have much more pressing priorities. The rights and needs of young gay people, for instance, are constantly denied, and the resultant pain and suffering is intense.

Last month the media launched a ferocious attack on the only organisation in the country which provides shelter specifically for homeless young gays. There was also further resistance to the idea of positive images of homosexuals in schools.

The Sunday Telegraph started the assault on the Albert Kennedy Trust (February 18th) in a grotesquely distorted front-page story declaring: “As many as 100 ‘gay’ children have been placed in homosexuals’ care in London and Manchester by the government-approved charity. The practice has horrified psychologists and MPs who fear that children will be ‘ensnared in a deviant way of life’.”

Tory MP Sir Ivan Lawrence is quoted as saying: “This is ghastly. I would take a lot of persuading that children who have homosexual tendencies are not redeemable. Giving them homosexual foster parents will merely set them in that way for life.”

The story was predictably taken up the next day by The Daily Mail and The Daily Express, who gave it the full ranting treatment. “Gay foster homes scandal” screeched the Express, and editorialised: “The sexual turbulence of adolescence is well attested. Putting youngsters who might be temporarily confused about their sexual feelings into the hands of homosexuals risks turning that confusion into a permanent way of life. It is difficult not to suspect that this is what the [Albert Kennedy] Trust intends… Do Ministers know what is being accepted in their name? They do now in this case. So let us see some action.”

The controversy even provoked Mary Whitehouse to emerge from her dotage to repeat her over-familiar whinges in The Sunday Telegraph’s letters column (February 25th): “I speak from years of experience of responsibility for sex education of adolescent children…” Mary Whitehouse was in charge of sex education? No wonder the nation is so maladjusted!

Meanwhile The Sun’s “Watchdog”, Leo McKinstry, put all those sad, homophobic fears in a nutshell (February 24th): “Gay rights groupies persist in trying to influence children… Under-14s cannot possibly be sure of their sexuality.” This was reiterated by consultant psychiatrist Dr Raj Persaud in The Daily Mail: “There are lots of children who go through a gay phase in adolescence and if they are in a phase, how do you know they won’t come out of it?”

This “homosexual phase” theory is really the core of the argument— and also at the root of a great deal of misery for young gay people. But is it real or the figment of disordered imaginations? The one calm voice of reason came in The Times (February 21st). One of their writers (a self-confessed heterosexual) criticised the “we-know-best” brigade in these terms: “They swear that all these young boys will get seduced, ‘condemned’ even, into a life of homosexuality. Now I know 13 sounds young, but those of us who aren’t gay can’t possibly know how it feels if you are. Every one of my gay friends says he knew he was gay from the age of 5. And if being fostered by a straight couple won’t make a gay boy straight, I can’t see a gay couple turning a straight boy gay.” Such logic evades homophobes.

So, what are young gay people — the vast majority of whom aren’t in the least confused or ambiguous about their feelings — supposed to do? They can suffer in silence or risk being told by Mary Whitehouse that she knows better than they do what’s going on inside their heads.

Or alternatively they could write to an agony aunt. This seems like a very good course of action because in the main they’ll get a respectful and positive response, even in the tabloids. “My parents found out I was gay — though I’ve known about it for years — and they won’t talk to me,” wrote a desperate 16-year-old to Deirdre Sanders in The Sun. She tells him to keep trying to build bridges with his parents, and gives the address of the Lesbian and Gay Youth Movement.

A much less straightforward case turned up for Zelda West-Meades, The Mail on Sunday’s advice columnist: “My younger brother is 15, but from the age of ten he has believed he is gay. He says he hates gays and that he has never fancied another boy and will never do so. He feels his mind is to blame because it is telling him he is gay. If a man so much as touches his clothes, he has to wash them and have a bath. Recently it has got worse and he is hitting his head violently. I am worried that he will have a breakdown or cause brain damage.” Zelda suggests the writer tries to persuade her brother to see his GP so he can be referred to a psychologist, or alternatively to ring Childline on 0800-800 500.

The only way to stop torturing gay children is to give them the information they need at an early age. But any attempt to do this immediately brings down the ire of the smug, the complacent and the plain evil.

“Outcry at gay school book for children of 5” announced The Daily Express (March 2nd), but the “outcry” came from all the usual sources.

“5-year olds to get gay lessons” was The Daily Mail’s version of the story about a modest little school book called “Colours of the Rainbow” produced by Camden and Islington Health Trust. The Mail told us that: “The book provides lesson ideas for pupils aged five to 16. It tells teachers how to create ‘positive images’ of homosexual men and women, and persuade children that it is an acceptable lifestyle.”

Given what has gone before one would imagine it to be an excellent idea, but The Mail solicited the half-baked opinions of the lamentable Lady Olga Maitland: “The people who are putting this kind of thing forward as a model for children are frankly rather sick. We ought to be doing more to encourage normal family life.”

Then the Mail had the cheek to say in its editorial “Discrimination against gays is patently unacceptable.” (I’ll let you chew on that one for a while). “But to teach children about homosexuality and bisexuality at an age when they can surely have little understanding of heterosexual conduct is political correctness gone mad.” It then goes on to insist that the Education Secretary ensures “that the book be banned from all schools.”

A few days later The Mail was taken to task for its hate-mongering by Darrell Gale, a 25-year-old gay man, who wrote in the letters column about “the horror of growing up gay while at school”. He said: “At secondary school the bullying started, name-calling intensified and, when adolescence arrived, I became an irate, unbalanced youth. My energies went into thinking up different ways of killing myself, harming myself or willing my body and soul to change.”

With testimony like that I don’t know how Lady Olga Hateland and The Daily Mail can live with themselves.

But sometimes newspapers can provide a platform for young gays who want to tell others about their experiences. Gordon Menzies grew up gay in a small community in North Ayrshire. He says he knew that he was gay from the age of twelve, but was worried about the reaction he would get if he came out.

When he took the first tentative steps from the closet, the trouble really started. Gordon took the first opportunity to escape from Scotland and made a bee line for Manchester, but he decided that he would let the residents of West Kilbride know just what they had done to him. In a letter to the local newspaper, The Largs and Milport Weekly News, he wrote: “At the age of 20, I decided to tell my mother. It was one of the hardest things a son could tell his mother, but I broke it gently and she took it better than I expected. However, I felt like an outcast from the family and soon it spread around the village and I was given a lot of abuse by local residents and shop owners, and was even sacked from my hotel job in Glasgow just for being different. It is something I would not wish to happen to my worst enemy, as by the time small-minded people have finished with you, all your confidence can be destroyed.”

It was only by running away that Gordon could get any peace. He’s now happier than he has ever been. Others are not so fortunate and that’s where the Albert Kennedy Trust’s real value comes into play.

It’s up to all of us to help our gay children survive in a world full of Olga Maitlands, Ivan Lawrences and disgusting Daily Mail readers.

***

Peter Mandelson is a Labour MP who almost everyone believes to be gay, but who refuses to talk about it. The launch of his book, The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? has brought him much personal publicity, much of which made oblique reference to his sexuality.

In the Daily Telegraph’s profile, Fiammetta Rocco wrote: “One of Mandelson’s assistants twice called to ask what I would write about his private life. ‘He is paranoid about his sexuality and doesn’t know how to deal with it’ a close friend told me. ‘I think it makes him a very lonely man.’ He is clearly very sensitive about it, and as Tony Blair gets closer to the very heart of the political establishment he can become only more so.”

For someone who is supposed to be an ace media manipulator and string-puller, Mandelson seems strangely blind to what can happen to those who are economical with the truth in politics. If Labour does come anywhere near to attaining power, does Mandelson think that the Tory papers will spare him? His reluctance to be open and dignified about his sexuality puts a mighty powerful weapon into the hands of his enemies,

Meanwhile, David Ashby, the Tory MP who recently lost a libel action against The Sunday Times after it alleged he was gay, showed there were no hard feelings. He bravely voted against the Government by supporting a Housing Bill amendment that would give homosexual people living in a council or housing association property the right to inherit the tenancy if their partner died. “Why should we not allow succession?” he reasonably asked. “What is fundamentally wrong?”

Might I suggest Mr Ashby discusses the issue with Mandy Mandelson?